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Punch Cards | Making Chores Fun for Kids

You may remember my Cleaning the House is Fun to Do series from last year. I love when my kids help out around the house without complaint and I love to let them have their own spending money that they earned to buy whatever their little hearts desire. We have been using the same chore chart system for a long time now and it has worked great! We have just been crazy busy lately and so I thought it might be fun to have a little punch card system that way the kids can see the results of their efforts in a fun way.

Cleaning the house with kids

The jobs are still pretty much the same;

Get Ready (eat breakfast, clear their own dish, brush their teeth, get dressed, make their bed and make sure their rooms are straightened)

Read for 15 minutes and do a worksheet (as home schoolers we have lots of leftover work sheets in their books, so I just let them pick one, and the younger kids get read to by either myself or one of the older kids as part of their 15 minutes)

Do their own Age Appropriate job (unloading the dishwasher, take out the trash, and clean up the living room)

Help mom with the job of the day (I’ll talk more about that another time, but on Fridays-it’s thoroughly clean the bedrooms-they all help)

Extra punches for good deeds, or extra jobs (mom and dad’s discretion)

For the first job they get two punches since it is quite a bit to do, but it is also one that MUST get done every day no matter what.

For all the rest they get one punch on their card.

They keep their punch cards in their wallets, and bring them to me every time they complete a job for a punch. I have a star hole puncher and a regular circle hole punch, one is upstairs and one is down so wherever I am I can punch their card when they bring it to me. You could also use a stamp or little reward stickers on these cards.

Free Printable

Each punch is worth a dime. When their card is full, it is worth $2. We have decided to start paying the kids on my husbands pay day; because sometimes we have to wait for things until pay day and the kids didn’t really understand that. So these are kind of their ‘time cards’ so to speak. On pay day they hand in their completed card(s) and my husband pays up.

I put little suns on the punches since I made these for summer with just a dingbat font.

For the punch cards themselves I printed them out on a heavier green paper and my ink was running out which is why it is red, but when printed on white paper with black ink, it would look more like this;

Tiffany is a stay at home mom to four ridiculously cute kids and wife to one smoking hot Mc Dreamy lookalike. She loves remodeling, chocolate chip cookies and sunshine. She is the founder of Making the World Cuter, a site committed to doing just what the title states; Making the world cuter, one kid, DIY, yummy treat or crafty thing at a time.

Reader Interactions

Comments

I just had to smile when I saw this. My kids are grown now (last one got married last fall) and this is SO like the things I did with them when they were growing up. I LOVE IT. And it is such a good way to teach them so many things. Keep up the good work. I’ll pass along this post to others. It’s great! 🙂

Well thank you! I am always coming up with hairball schemes like this to trick my kids into doing stuff for me. Hee hee! I know they will look back and think, “Wow mom was nuts!”
Sorry about taking so long getting back to you on your comment, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate it and thanks for taking the time to leave one!
hugs-
Tiffany

Sorry about the delay on getting back to you on your comment! Summer can be a little hectic!

I appreciate you sharing your link with me and for sharing the punch cards on your blog! Thank you!!!

I hope you are enjoying the punch cards and that they are working out for your screen time. That is a perfect use for them! I may have to make a second set for rewarding my boys for other things since that is all they care about!

Hope your summer is going great and that you have some fun plans for Wednesday!

I got so excited when I saw this on Think Pink Sundays! My Jr high kiddo wants cash for the special lunch/snack bar that they have at school but I’m not just handing it over. Best way ever to keep track of the extra stuff she does to earn that cash! I called it her ‘lunch punch’ card and the spaces are worth a quarter so the whole card is $5

Love this idea and can not wait to start using it! Is there anyway to get a copy of the blank punch card sheet s that I can add my kids names and the $ amount they will earn. I downloaded your blank form but am not able to change/add to it. i am not very tech savy and wasn’t sure if there was a way to do modify it. Thanks!!

Hi Jessica! I made mine in Photoshop. I don’t know what program you have to edit things but you can always write it in and then make copies. Let me know how you would like to modify it though and maybe if I have a second I can make it compatible with your program. Thanks for the comment! 🙂
TiffTiffany @Making the World Cuter recently posted…Making the World Cuter Monday | January 7, 2013

Tiffany, do you by chance have a version that isn’t a PDF? I wanted to adapt the blank version or just adapt yours so that it doesn’t have them earning money. I want my kids to choose things like extra minutes reading together, an ice cream cone, a rental, or from different levels of toys, or save up to buy something they’ve been eyeing. Thanks again! MindyMindy recently posted…A Family Movie Adventure

Trackbacks

[…] also mentioned before that my kids do their fair share of chores. We still use the punch card system and it works great for us.My kids are responsible for their own room clutter, making their own beds […]

[…] As an adult I am a sucker for loyalty punch cards, so it stands to reason that as a kid I would have loved these chore punch cards from Making the World Cuter. What a great incentive to get your kids to lend a hand! When they fill up the card, treat them to a pizza party, take them to the water park, buy them that new video game they’ve been wanting… Whatever gets your kids going! [download the free printable] […]

[…] because that would get to be a bit much day in and day out, we are using punch cards much like the job punch cards that we already do. Every time he sits on the potty, we give him a punch on his Monster Punch Card. […]